I'm still quite fond of B/W photography and always looking for works that somehow keep it alive and explore new possibilities for it, rather than using it to propose something that simply repeats what was already done. This is why I was immediately fascinated by Peter Schlör's photography, a beautiful combination of a conceptual and an extremely perceptive approach, a long sequence of studies of the shapes of natural and artificial spaces where the subtle changes of shades of gray from pitch black to pure white give depth and life to its often strict compositions.

Some of his images will be on show in Rome from September 28 in the exhibition Cities - Places Visionaries, together with works by Gabriele Basilico, Marco Zanta, Michael Wolf, Shaun Gladwell, Dmitry Gutov and Damir Ocko.

Fact is, 17 days after Neri himself announced that the agency is entering liquidation due to a 40% decrease in sales during the last year only (funny that the news came out first on PDN and British Journal of Photography than on any Italian media).The crisis of the editorial market that started in the second half of 2008 is addressed as the main reason leading the agency to shut down.Much could be written about how the editorial market is changing and how the role of photography is shifting, and also how the photographic profession is being downsized face to the increasing availability of images that is undermining the professional and economical acknowledgement of the work required to make these photographs.This crisis is anyway part of the global financial crisis that ‘fell’ on the world a year ago, and everybody has different opinions about what is happening to the profession of photographer in the present time. I suggest to make some thoughts while looking at three photographic works each proposing a different approach to the present financial world, three totally different statements that starting from the same issue show three different identities of photography: maybe the future of photography is once more in this, in the fact that it’s not the tools you use that make the images, but it’s about many people shaping their own visions, and expressing their creativity. Maybe the more the object (i.e the image) is considered an easy thing to be made, the more the human hand and mind behind it must be shown in order to give back to photography the dignity it must have as an expression of human creativity and craftsmanship.

Here’s a flight in three steps from the sidewalks of a financial district to inaccessible altitudes and impossible truths:

- Benjamin Norman shows us Wall Street in the most typical street photography style: a stronghold of greed, frenzy and stress that is slowly surrounded by the anger and the pressure of the outside world.

- Jan Stradtmann in Garden of Eden photographed the loneliness of bankers seeking some solace in the peace of a London park during the first months of the crisis, with the quite and silent place enhancing the meaning of every little gesture and posture of their distressed bodies.(Norman and Stradtmann both found via Conscientious)

- Michael Najjar’s last work High Altitude transforms mountain peaks in the shape of the leading stock exchange indices of the last 20-30 years, merging the virtuality of the datas and the weight of their effect in the real world into imaginary mountain ridges.

PS One of the readers comments following the PDN reporting of Grazia Neri shutting down says: “Thanks to McReuters and AP Donalds. And to blogophotographers. They killed the market.”

Another overdue mention is for Michele Cera's work, part of the Global Photography bunch and whose work I've been somehow following over the last year. His selection of photographs at the show was called Journey into a fragile lanscape and they were realised in Albania, but fragile is a word that says a lot about the ensemble of his work, images of places and people that seem to be on the verge of fading away, a bleaching light falling upon spaces struggling to survive, a vision thorn by the doubt between showing and not showing, including or taking off most of what is in front of the lens.

"Buffet is a collection of special editions, book + print sets, artist's books, print/book trades and various interesting ways in which photographers are packaging and selling their work."

5B4 has definitely a contendent, and so I pay my overdue hommage to Andrew Phelps' blog, a true banquet of interesting photographic objects, garnished with some delicious tastes of personal diary, like his reports from Japan while working on his latest book, Not Niigata.

The most interesting find that came from the portfolio reviews I made at SiFest is probably the work I'm the Snow by Chris Rain, an Italian young photographer whose images are surreal fairy tales inspired by memories of his childhood. Alternative developing processes and double exposures in darkroom bathe his often eerie set-ups in some kind of mist that gives the feeling of watching mysterious happenings through an old and dusty glass ball. His portfolio was awarded with an exhibition at 2010 FOTOsintesi festival, so take note.

Back from SiFest 2009, the main thing I felt was the pleasure of having met with people, of having seen the face of many I just exchanged many e-mails with or only saw their work so far, and then finally heard their voice, shared a table, had a chat with them. Then the joy for all the photography I saw, and for those projects of which I somehow followed the steps in the past months and which then at last were in front of me as real, accomplished and beautiful things.Tra le molte persone incontrate, mi piace ad esempio ricordare il tempo passato insieme a Seba Kurtis, Andrew Phelps e Mathieu Bernard-Reymond, presenti nella mostra Global Photography- Looking at/Looking for e con cui rimane in sospeso la domanda a cui non sono stato capace di rispondere: perché molti italiani quando parlano dello stato della fotografia in patria si lamentano così tanto.

Among the many people I met, I would like to remind the time I spent with Seba Kurtis, Andrew Phelps and Mathieu Bernard-Reymond, who were included in the Global Photography-Looking at/Looking for show and who asked me many times a question that remain unanswered: why Italians tend to complain so much about the state of photography in their own country.

Thanks to Massimo Sordi and Stefania Rössl, curators of Global Photography, who gave me the chance to step into the real (and not just virtual) world of the debate about Italian photography by inviting me to a panel about young photographers: this way I humbly tried to bring blogs and online photography to sit next to the traditional issues discussed in this debates, and who knows if this is something we could use a little bit in Italy.

Peter Bialobrzeski and Marco Zanta during the panel 'Photography and education'

Besides the show Global Photography (and thanks again to Massimo and Stefania for inviting me to write some free flow thoughts for the catalogue of the exhibition), I especially liked the sin_tesis project, a photographic campaign aimed at exploring the industrial world of the area around Savignano, home of the SiFest. The first chapter was realized by Marco Zanta with his beautiful work 20 fotografie e 6 appunti (20 photographs and 6 notes), on show together with images by the students of a workshop with Zanta himself about the same theme (find the workshop’s blog here).

More thoughts, discoveries, faces I brought back home with me from the festival in the next days, so stay tuned.

The 18th edition of the Savignano Immagini Festival will take place on September 11-13 in Savignano sul Rubicone, Italy. The group show Global Photography, Peter Bialobrzesky's Lost in Transition, Martin Parr's Luxury and 20 fotografie e 6 appunti by Marco Zanta are among this year's exhibitions. Lectures, conferences, slideshows, portfolio reviews and more will happen during the three days. I'll be there as a portfolio reviewer, so hopefully see you around!

Some more portrait therapy (hope Mrs Deane will allow me this quote), taking this as a chance to refresh some links to the works of Mike Brodie, aka Polaroid Kidd (see also here). He recently took both his websites off, and apparently is nowhere to be found active on the net anymore.Escape from the mainstream world? Change of strategy suggested by some fancy agent?After all, he's only 24...

"Please to be considering my Flickr account as a sketchbook, no more, no less.

I am either a driven, focused and ridiculous individual striving to become a modern-day Renaissance man, or a pretentious, deluded dork heading for a fall."

I will, Hin Chua (fellow @Paris contributor, by the way), but allow me to link to your extended They called me a corporate whore series, which you might even consider less important than your more recent and wider task pursued with After the Fall, but which I need in order to get out of my loop of photographic picks almost deprived of any human presence...

Mus-mus has just launched their new online group show, @Paris. After the collective shooting moment of @600, this time they gathered a wide number of photographers under the theme of Paris, inviting people to provide an image made in the city of lights any time in their life. I was really happy to join both projects, looking forward for the next call for action by the mysterious clan!